


memory

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Dawn of the Future (Final Fantasy XV), F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 14:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: What did she look like when she smiled?





	memory

**Author's Note:**

> holds episode ardyn in my arms, mostly just aerdyn  
> hey. still not over this one

Somewhere over two thousand years, he’d forgotten how she looked when she smiled.

The young oracle _never_ smiles, at least not in his presence – she is always cold and withdrawn, corners of her lips turned in a scowl. The spitting image of the woman he’d once known, the woman that he remembers, right down to the frown on her face.

_What did she look like when she smiled?_

The oracle’s older brother intrigues him.

He’s nothing like his sister, in appearance or behavior – quite frankly, Ravus reminds him a little bit of Somnus in some ways, and not ones that he particularly likes to think about. His motivation to keep his sister safe is so _easily_ swayed, so easily cast aside in the moment that he acquires the ring, has all the power and knowledge of the Lucii at his fingertips. So easy to throw your loved ones aside for the crown when it is dangled in front of you.

Sometimes, though – sometimes in the set of his shoulders, in the look that he _thinks_ he hides whenever Ardyn voices concern for her safety, sometimes he sees something familiar. Distant, even more distant than the Lady Lunafreya, but there’s something _there._

_Why can’t I remember…?_

“Oh, prince! Your bride awaits!”

Sinking the knife into her torso, tearing through precious organs, is so, so satisfying – he loathes her, loathes her entire blasted bloodline, loathes a woman he cannot even remember, only that she and his brother conspired to send him all the way to hell. He watches his brother’s descendant turn a lovely shade of white; oh, this is the most fun he’s had in months. And he’s had a _very_ fun few months.

“I will...pass the ring...to the rightful king...”

He grabs her face in his hands, the wind and rain howling around them; the rightful _king,_ how dare his lover’s damned relation speak to her of _rightful kings -_

The look on her face is curious, solemn; she takes his hand tightly in hers. It gives him pause.

“When the prophecy is fulfilled…all in thrall to darkness shall know peace.”

Warm. Her magic is soft and warm, and for a moment he can _feel_ it on the edge of his tongue, remember something important, something he had to have forgotten -

Something equally familiar, something tainted, something terrible and foul blasts overtop it, overwhelms any other memory; her magic is an echo of his own. The blood staining her gown is dark, dark like his own. Dark like the shadow of this damned prophecy that has both her and him tied ‘til they die. If he ever dies.

He tears his arm from her gasp and strikes her in the cheek. He curls his fingers, looking at the spot on his wrist where her magic has left him burning.

_I don’t want to remember._

The brother is sentenced to death, as he expects; failure of duty in Altissia, murder of a Niflheim general. As much as he would _love_ to watch Ravus live in wait for his eventual execution, he has other plans. He won’t let _another_ rat, Lucis Caelum or Fleuret, get away from him. He’s waited two thousand years, and he’s going to take his sweet time watching them _all_ bleed out.

He carries the man’s corpse effortlessly through the halls of Zegnautus Keep; the twisted magitek do not pay him any mind. He’s marked safe by the dark aura that brands him as the accursed.

“Pathetic, aren’t you?” He murmurs to the man’s corpse. The oracle’s descendant gives a stir; it’s no matter. He’ll be dead soon enough.

_I’ve seen you in sorrow for so long that I almost delight in it._

“Lunafreya!”

There it is.

Damn him, he should have known this, he should have _expected_ this – thirty-odd years he’s spread the star’s plague, years and years and memories and memories of people who’s lives he’s turned to darkness. Ravus Nox Fleuret’s memories are a thousand agonizing knives directly to his heart, the boy who’s been rejected by his brother, distant descendant of a lover he cannot remember.

The Lady Lunafreya sits in her room, admiring her wedding gown; a useless gesture, he knows, even through Ravus’s eyes; but the girl’s eyes are soft. Fond. She holds the fabric in her gown knowing that it means nothing, but something in her eyes betrays a fantasy of something that may have been in another time.

Damn him.

_Damn them all._

The smallest curl of the corners of her lips, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners; all at once he can remember _,_ he can remember a face he’s long since forgotten, a smile that he desperately tried to burn into his mind only to slip away. He watches the Fleuret girl sit there, admiring the wedding gown, feeling a gut-punching sadness take hold of him. He isn’t sure if it’s her brother’s remembered sadness or his own long-buried _longing._ Remembering her own face the day he’d asked that she marry him. Remembering the way that she laughed. Remembering the way that her mouth twitched when she smiled, when she was thinking, when they were alone together and we would tell her endless stories he’d crafted and she would _smile_ and _laugh -_

He yanks his hands off of Ravus, and finds himself misty-eyed. He laughs; it’s a horrible sound, sorrow threatening to bubble up from just below the surface. The man lies there with blackened veins creeping along his skin, breath coming in shuddering gulps as the daemonic energy takes hold of him, and Ardyn falls to his knees, laughing and sobbing and cursing the man for giving him the memory back.

_I remember it now._

**Author's Note:**

> the particular translation of ardyn's chapter of the novel i'm currently referencing (at the time of posting, an official english release isn't published) is by [higharollakockamamie](https://higharollakockamamie.tumblr.com/post/186292967272/ffxv-dawn-of-the-future-the-conflict-of-the-sage) on tumblr, specifically this excerpt:
> 
> “I’m sorry.” 
> 
> Aera? Why are you apologizing? You did nothing at all wrong. 
> 
> “I’m sorry.” 
> 
> No, no, no. I want to remember you smiling. Smile for me. If you don’t, I will forget it. 
> 
> “I’m sorry.” 
> 
> That’s not right. Why can’t I remember it? You, looking happy.


End file.
